Tag: maple sap

Half Tapped

We got the trees at the top of the driveway (12), the ones at the bottom (2), and the ones along the river (9) tapped today. 23 trees tapped. Tomorrow, we’ll get the back woods (17 trees), the black walnuts at the farm (three or four), plus the new trees at the farmhouse (no idea — at least one huge black walnut and one huge sugar maple). That’s around 23 more. Which means we are halfway done tapping!

Although there is one up the hill at the bottom of the driveway and two more up a hill along the river that we don’t generally tap (fetching sap is dangerous, especially as the ground thaws and it is muddy!). There are also the two maples by the house that never produce sap, the enormous one by the river that I was very disappointed to learn also does not produce sap, and the big sugar maple in the front yard that we are letting recover. Seven untapped trees.

Maple log — finishing boil

We used our DigiBoil 65L 240V pot to finish the sap since it’s quick to remove from the heat once the syrup is ready (and it’s got a spigot that makes emptying the pot easier). This also gave us a good picture of how long the DigiBoil is going to take to boil wort when we’re making beer. Yesterday, with temps in the upper 30’s, it took about 1h50m (basically two hours) to boil 10 gallons of concentrated sap. Today, with temps in the upper 40’s, it took about 50 minutes to boil 7 gallons of concentrated sap.

Sunday 05 March 2023
15:44 59F
16:40 167F
17:17 203F
17:34 208F and rapidly boiling
1h50m to boil.

Flamed out just after midnight

Monday 06 March 2023

09:43AM – 68F turned on 500W
09:50AM – Turned on 2nd switch
09:56AM – 111F – turned on 3rd switch
10:32AM – 7 gallons is now boiling
About 50 minutes to boil.
Maple flame out at 2:34PM

Bottled, we have 3.5 gallons of maple syrup from our first run